My Niece's Third Birthday (and other lies for the internet)
by kawaiisailorbart
Summary: A story following Jinx post S5 as she tries to be a crime fighter and face her rapidly approaching 20's and dreaded adulthood. It's difficult for her to uncover her past, make friends, keep lovers, and fight crime-but she finds an unsuspected love of gourmet cooking. Set in mid 2000's, for all five of us that wish we could go back. I'm new at writing, please be gentle.


MY NEICE'S THIRD BIRTHDAY (and other lies I used to publish recipes on the internet)

By Rebecca West (with a forward from Garfield Logan)

I think life is a lot like cooking. No matter what you mix up or how you plate it in the end, the most important moment is when you add heat. Don't get me wrong, there's nothing better than the split second you leave someone speechless as you drop that honest-to-god artwork of a creme brule in front of them in the comfort of your single-room apartment with bad wallpaper. That unexpected admiration when they realize you're not making food, you're making experiences, memories; hell, I'll say it—art. It's the payoff we all crave more than anything. The kegger at the end of the quarter when your team crushed sales. The green room champagne toast at the end of a six-week Broadway run. Moments when you can finally say "There, it's over! Celebrate!" Those moments are what we want more than anything.

Those moments don't just happen. And more importantly? They don't matter. Somewhere between the day you realize you might want to whip up something better than hamburger helper, to the day you're selling a cookbook, are about a thousand others where everything went wrong. The gravy went from mud to water for no reason. Your new electric stove just burned your oh so delicate asparagus tips. My favorite—the filet mignon you just worked so hard on, sitting on the floor, slowly leaking its mouth watering juices into the kitchen tile grout because right before you opened the oven you thought "I can grab it with just a dish towel, don't worry." I've had more than my fair share of those.

The point is, no matter what the end of the line is, you've got to come to grips with the fact that you're going to be smelling smoke more often than success. Not just in the kitchen in your home, but in the great kitchen we call "life." But when you're looking at the blackened ashes of what was once the ingredients for an amazing dinner and you realize there's no going back to step one with this recipe, you get something better than that picture-perfect image on the cover of your dogeared _Southern Style_.

You get experience. You burned this one, chances are you'll burn the next one. The one after that? Maybe edible. Now keep doing it over and over, and eventually you really will have that perfectly seasoned, reasonably priced meal for four. And you'll realize when you're setting that platter on the dining room table, that even though your family and friends are all in awe at how amazing of a cook you are, that you already have the payoff you wanted. Your burned and slashed knuckles will stand in silent memorial to every time you saw your own blood and wanted to cry, not from physical pain but the heartbreaking realization that you're an amateur playing major league. Hidden on top of the refrigerator are numerous discarded magazines, literal pies-in-the-sky that you promised you'd get to next week, about two years ago. As those precious few people in your life dig into your creation, you realize that it isn't this one time that everything went right that you're thankful for. It's all the times you messed up and learned from it. Seriously, you might have to choke back some tears.

So keep cooking. This isn't just a cookbook, it's a testament to the many chickens, cows, pigs, potatos, leeks, carrots, garlic cloves, and countless spice bottles that ended not on a fork but in the garbage, their ruined corpses still smoking. Because life is like cooking—if we just wanted it perfect, we'd have someone else do it. It's never about the end of the line, it's about the many moments between that first cracked egg and that final garden herb quiche.

And also like cooking, the best recipes for life are the ones that are kind of nutty.


End file.
